The Glyphs of Kaylaric
by Mouse
Here's our weekly roundup on what's been happening at the Guild over the last seven days.
Challenge News
November Regular Challenge
November's challenge was 'Survive!', inspired by a suggestion from Wingshaw. Guilders were asked "to create a fortress for a handful of survivors to withstand a zombie apocalypse" or, alternatively, "instead of zombies each participant gets to choose what hideous beasties, terrible monsters, or ghastly ghouls their survivors are going to encounter."
Our congrats this month go to Mouse for her entry The Glyphs of Kaylaric. Mouse went for the second option and created a map showing a protective glyph system devised to protect villagers from evil magic. Read more of the worldbuilding that went into the map in this comment.
Mouse wins her third gold compass and the congrats of all at the Guild!
Honourable mentions to runners-up FranCobasGC for map 'Z Apocalypse' and ladiestorm for 'VeterHaven Fortress'.
December Regular Challenge
Our new challenge for December is up and running, and we have a very seasonal theme this month. Diamond writes...
Your challenge this month, should you choose to accept it, is to create a map showing two or more distinct races or cultures living together in harmony. For example, you could map a city with different districts that interact peacefully; you could map out the Babylon 5 space station; or a dwarven-made mountain city where elves have planted massive trees - the two races create a city of stone and wood spires...
The challenge is - the peaceful co-existence that you're mapping can't be the result of conquest or war. It has to be a genuine attempt to live together in harmony! Other than that, what you map and how is entirely up to you.
This challenge will run until approximately 9PM Pacific time on Sunday, 31 December. After that will be three days of voting, after which the winner will receive a shiny golden compass and a hearty huzzah! from the Guild.
The challenge is - the peaceful co-existence that you're mapping can't be the result of conquest or war. It has to be a genuine attempt to live together in harmony! Other than that, what you map and how is entirely up to you.
This challenge will run until approximately 9PM Pacific time on Sunday, 31 December. After that will be three days of voting, after which the winner will receive a shiny golden compass and a hearty huzzah! from the Guild.
Check out the challenge folder for more info and to view current entries.
Lite Challenge
Our Lite Challenge 'Map a Farm or Ranch' ends around the 14th, so get those entries finished and submitted. More in the Lite Challenge folder.
Challenge Suggestions
Two recent challenge suggestions are attracting some discussion, so go vote if you like the idea...
- Map from labels already placed... (suggested by Chashio)
- Map a Children's Tree House/Fort (suggested by ladiestorm)
If you're not quite keen on either idea, submit your own in the Suggestions folder.
Cartographers' Choice Award
Warm congratulations from everyone at the Guild to Shall Teclex on being awarded a Cartographers' Choice award for map 'Desert Dragon'.
Shall's map was created for (and won) the July 2017 regular challenge. This challenge sent entrants to a fantasy generator site, where they created a list of themes or topics. They were asked to pick one topic from their list and map it. Shall's theme was "Somewhere in the Dune Sea. An ancient sapphire-scaled dragon lies sleeping in the sun."
Check out the full size version of the map in the award thread, and leave a comment for Shall.
Five finished maps
Five hot maps posted over the past week.
- The Route of the Carlyle Expedition - Call of Cthulhu [commission] by Akae
- Rainbow Lake by Arsheesh
- 'White Hill, district 17 of Guild City' by Azelor
- The City of Aes by Greg
- The Khanate of Katlam by Jo
Five threads to check out
The latest work-in-progress threads, interesting discussions, new tutorials etc etc. It's all here.
- Kacey's developing a world map, tentatively titled 'unexplored lands'. Check out her latest update.
- Daelin pointed us to a DeviantArt gallery offering lots of freebie parchments, textures, cobblestones etc. Take a look.
- Are you having issues with Windows 10 Creator's Update? Share your woes here. Some discussion about using Linux for mapping too.
- Tilt's back working on an unfinished challenge map : Quest of the Drunken Master - The City of Bacchus
- Vanaheim by Hawksguard, a world map.
Around the web
Some links for your reading/viewing pleasure.- Many moons ago we did an On the Map interview with Max (go read it if you haven't already). In that interview, he told an amusing story of a client who supplied a map made in an Excel spreadsheet, with coloured squares to show the 'geography'. Perhaps we shouldn't have laughed. Check out the work of Japanese artist, Tatsuo Horiuchi, who seems to have no problem creating beautiful pics in Excel....
- Bizarre, Enormous 16th-Century Map Assembled for First Time... "The largest known world map of its time—made of 60 individual sheets—can finally be seen as the mapmaker intended." From National Geographic.
- Back in March this year, a new member to Guild, Melinda, posted 'The Melbourne Map', a map she published in 1990. She mentioned in the thread that a team were working on an updated map, and it looks like the new map will be out soon. More info at their site.
- Pantone's colour of the year for 2018 is Ultra Violet. Will we see an influx of purple-toned maps next year...?
- Atlas of Design are looking for submissions for Volume IV. You've got till Feb to submit.
Thanks for reading. Watch out for our next round-up next week.
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